Mirror, Illusion, Dream, Mirage
Mirror, illusion, dream, mirage.
Ever since her first meeting with Blanc three years ago, Noir had stopped walking the path laid out for her and begun carving one of her own. Where the original Noir had followed the royal road of nobility and served as a model for her peers, this Noir strode forward with the conviction that whatever path she walked was the path of nobility—a stride so bold it bordered on the tyrannical.
Yet even if she had diverged from the original, the change was not a bad one. No matter how high-handed her road, Noir’s nature remained kinder than anyone’s, so she never twisted crooked; and unlike the original, who had endlessly agonized over what a true noble ought to be, the Noir of the present walked her own path with quiet, overflowing confidence.
But “not bad” did not mean “better.”
In the original story, Noir had stumbled upon a book titled The Duty of Nobility in a secondhand shop, read it, and thereafter sworn off light entertainment novels entirely. Influenced instead by Blanc rather than that solemn volume, this Noir not only failed to quit such novels—she only read them more often.
“Hehe… hehehe…”
Late into the night. Noir, who could devour any novel the way a stray mutt wolfed down scraps, was once again reading well past midnight.
A Former Secret Organization Assassin Becomes a Maid and Obsessively Attaches Herself to Me, an Academy Student
A title so bizarre it made the head spin just looking at it. Like many readers of entertainment novels, Noir would criticize such titles—
Ugh, nowadays every novel just has to have an absurdly long title. Can’t they write something normal for once?
—and then, contradicting herself completely, read nothing but books with titles exactly like that. Worse still, whenever a story stirred her emotions too strongly, she would scribble her own fantasies into a notebook in the form of a novel—a truly pitiful sight. And the title she herself had written, after all that complaining about sentence-form titles?
A Maid from a Former Criminal Organization Pledges Loyalty to the Duchess
How wretched. How tragic. At least she had not yet gone hunting for the forbidden realm the underworld called “noble novels.” That much, perhaps, was a mercy. On rare occasions she did read the “noble novels” Maid Anjel left lying around the break room—but those were purely accidental, never intentional. Of course, even then she would flush scarlet, get a nosebleed, and keep reading diligently all the same.
“I should probably sleep soon.”
Still, it was a small blessing that Noir no longer cut her sleep to extremes the way she once had. She had merely traded late-night study hours for reading hours, yes—but the fact that a girl who once stayed up every night had begun sleeping more was unquestionably a good change.
“Young Miss. I worry that your habit of retiring so late every night may be harming your health.”
Naturally, this too was not Noir’s own idea. She had changed the habit because Blanc had fretted over it. But good was good, was it not?
Noir slipped the novel she had been reading into a cover labeled The Structure of the Aios Allied Nations, lay down on her bed, and brought the day’s work to a close.
It shatters.
It burns.
It collapses.
The world the gods had sculpted becomes shards of glass and scatters, and the long history humanity had carved upon it turns to ash and vanishes. Across more than a thousand years, every civilization and every achievement mankind had raised burns away, and through the cracks in space the shapes of a new world begin to appear.
"Fear not."
"All of this is but a new beginning."
"The first step into a new world—as nothingness."
In the crumbling world, a man’s voice rang out. At the center of the collapsing earth he stretched both hands toward the heavens and sang a hymn to the new world emerging through the rifts.
The sun-god’s chariot raced not across the horizon but over the land itself. The earth, abandoned by the Mother of Nature, withered and cracked; the enraged ocean drove its fist into the sky. From the split ground the armies of the underworld marched upon the living world—and at the place where all that hatred converged stood a pure-white girl.
"■■, ■■■—!"
"■■■— ■■■■■■—!"
At the gods’ advance, ancient calamities banished long ago rose again. Freed from their seals, they poured out their wrath upon gods and humankind alike, while the white-masked ones stood at the white girl’s center and watched it all unfold.
"■■—!"
Why was that child standing at their heart?
The black-haired girl watching tried to call the white girl’s name—but the sound that left her lips was nothing resembling language, only a foul and formless noise.
"This is all merely a passing process."
I have to save her. I have to tear that child away from them.
The black-haired girl reached toward the white one—but before her hand could touch her, it shattered into glass and began to scatter across the world.
"I raise the beacon of a new age—"
A figure of unknown identity, white mask and hood drawn low, approached the girl. When he laid a hand upon the head of the girl who now radiated an atmosphere utterly unlike her usual self, the concepts of space and time collapsed, and the rules that had governed the world began to break one by one.
The gravity that had upheld humanity vanished. The boundary between sky and earth that had divided above from below grew thin. Land and sea, which had separated the world from what lay beyond it, tangled and reshaped themselves.
"Come. This is the beginning of a new world."
A world collapsing. Gods advancing, calamities running wild—and the black-haired girl could only watch, powerless. Her body cracked like glass and fell apart; the fallen shards crumbled to ash in the world-consuming hellfire. The world crumbled, and the once-brilliant cosmos shed the mystery of infinite possibility and took on the color of death, where everything melted into ruin. Starting from the black waves of her hair, the girl’s body slowly dissolved into the universe.
"Noir."
As her body melted into the cosmos, the illusion called a dream began to shatter. Through the cracks of the crumbling fantasy, the light of the world called reality wrapped around my body. Within the breaking illusion, the black-haired girl who had never reached the white one turned to look at me and said:
You are not too late yet.
And then the illusion that bore the name of a dream collapsed completely.
"Hah—!"
Early morning. Noir finally wrenched her eyes open from a vicious nightmare.
"What on earth…!"
A dream. It had to be a dream. It had to be. So why did every sensation feel so horribly real?
Noir hastily checked the right hand she had stretched out in the dream. The hand that had shattered into glass moved perfectly fine—and only then could she be certain it had all been a dream.
"What… was that…?"
Dreams are close to mirages. No matter how happy, how sad, how terrifying they make a person, a mirage vanishes in time—and so, too, do the memories of a dream. Noir’s dream was no different. The memory of it scattered across the world like shards of the glass world she had seen, and disappeared.
But the anxiety that made her afraid did not vanish. It quietly took up residence in a corner of her heart.
Knock, knock.
While Noir was still turning over the fragmented pieces of the dream, a measured knock sounded at the door.
"Young Miss, it is Blanc."
"Huh? Ah—come in."
A girl’s voice she had long since grown used to. Only upon hearing it could Noir finally feel relief that she had left the dream behind and returned to reality.
"Young Miss, did you sleep we—Young Miss? Why are you crying?"
At Blanc’s words, Noir carefully brought a hand to her face. Perhaps it was the dream’s aftereffect—looking at Blanc standing there exactly as always, tears would not stop falling from her eyes.
"Ah, Young Miss—?"
Unable to hold her emotions in check, Noir ran straight to the door, threw her arms around Blanc, and buried her face against her.
Blanc. The warmth in her hands. That texture. And the startled voice, the faint fluster beneath that usual blank expression—this was unmistakably the Blanc she knew. Not a dream. She could reach out to Blanc. She could touch her. She could hold her.
"Just—just let me stay like this for a moment."
"Yes, Young Miss. I do not know what has happened, but if my presence can be of any comfort to you, I will wait as long as you need."
Startled as she was by the sudden embrace, Blanc quietly stroked the head buried against her chest. Only after lingering for a long while in Blanc’s maternal warmth—leaning more toward generous than slight—and the gentle touch of her hand could Noir finally settle her feelings.
"Th-then I’ll, um, go change!"
"I shall assist you with dressing as well."
"I can do it myself!"
Sorting her emotions was one thing. The rush of excitement and embarrassment that followed was another matter entirely.
"Aaaagh!"
Noir chased Blanc out of the room and promptly flung herself onto the bed.
What did I just do? I buried my face in Blanc’s chest over a dream!? What is she going to think of me…!
"Hiiieeek!"
Thump! Thump! Thump!
"—Ah, Young Miss? What is that noise…?"
"Nothing!"
Smothered in shame, Noir pulled the blanket completely over herself and kicked at it in a silent howl of mortification.
After thrashing about on the bed for quite some time, her face happened to press into the pillow. True to the Leonhart ducal house, the pillow’s texture was superb—almost exactly like the place her face had just been pressed against, Blanc’s…
"Kyaaaaah!!"
Thump! Thump! Thump! FWOOMP—!!
Only after the blanket burst open and its feathers danced through Noir’s room did she finally stop kicking the innocent bedding. The blanket, for its part, had already unjustly reached the end of its lifespan.
"Blanc! I heard from Dorothy! Your school uniform arrived, didn’t it!?"
Evening. Having finished dinner preparations, I went to call on the Young Miss in her room—only for her to look up at me with sparkling eyes and ask that very question.
How did she find out…! I tried to handle it as quietly as possible…!
Come to think of it, the knight in charge of security for the annex was on quite friendly terms with Dorothy. Since that knight also received all deliveries bound for the annex, perhaps news of my uniform’s arrival had leaked through him. I had trusted him…! I never specifically asked him to keep it secret, but still—I had trusted him!
"Blanc, so there’s something I’d like to ask…"
Please, Young Miss. Please, not that request… Please, Young Miss, forgive me just this once…
"Could you… show me your school uniform first…?"
Ah…
"Young Miss, as a maid, wearing casual clothes freely within the estate is…"
"Isn’t it a little off for a maid to refuse her young miss’s tiny little request? Just for a second. Please?"
No. I hadn’t even steeled my heart for this yet!
Taking off the maid uniform and putting on other clothes was still tolerable. But putting on that fluttery school-uniform skirt? Absolutely not. That would make it feel like I had actually become a girl…!
Of course, I had become a girl—but wearing a girls’ school uniform still filled me with a peculiar resistance. It might sound like nonsense coming out of nowhere, but the surprising truth was that since arriving in this world, I had never once willingly worn women’s clothing. I had always worn only the maid uniform—that sacred garment transcending the very concept of gender—and before putting on the maid uniform, I had worn the commoner’s clothes that boys wore.
One might wonder how no one found it strange for a girl to walk around in boys’ clothes in a medieval setting—but this world was never real-world medieval history to begin with. It was a game’s medieval era built by otaku developers, so of course it was fine. A beautiful girl in male clothing was a concept with considerable demand, after all. If one were going to quibble over historical accuracy regarding gender and rights in the early modern era, one ought to start by complaining about the existence of a modern-style school uniform and an academy that accepted commoners and nobles alike in the first place.
In the past I had found such slapdash worldbuilding convenient. Today, of all days, I wanted to curse the developers who had stuffed school-uniform skirts into an early modern setting.
"Young Miss."
"Put it on."
"…Yes."
I tried my best to break her resolve, but as a maid bound by a clear master-servant relationship, I could not refuse the Young Miss’s request to the end. In the end, fighting back the urge to cry, I had no choice but to go into the room and change.
Fine… It was going to happen someday anyway. Let’s just think of it as the schedule getting moved up a little.
"Y-Young Miss… I… I have… put on the… a-academy uniform…"
"That’s Blanc for you. With a figure like yours, anything looks good."
Kyaaaaaaah!
Seeing Blanc in the school uniform, Noir let out a tremendous cheer inside her head. Whether a school uniform truly counted as “casual clothes” was debatable, but this was the first time in three years Noir had seen Blanc in anything other than a maid uniform. And back then Blanc had been wearing commoners’ trousers and a shirt—nothing this feminine—so the destructive power of Blanc in a school uniform far surpassed anything Noir had imagined.
Blanc, embarrassed by the unfamiliar clothes, kept her head deeply bowed and her face flushed red—but that uncharacteristic shyness only excited Noir further.
"Dorothy and everyone else… I truly do not understand what is so appealing about this uniform…"
"Wait, Blanc. Dorothy? Don’t tell me you already showed her this look…?"
"Yes… I happened to run into Dorothy, and…"
So I wasn’t the first one to see Blanc in her school uniform…? Dorothy stole Blanc’s first time before I did…?
Noir closed her eyes and imagined Dorothy’s reaction upon seeing Blanc’s uniform first.
"Oi oi, Young Miss Noir… Sorry, but Blanc wanted to show me her uniform first, y’know? Kyahahahaha!"
It was a slander so outrageous that the real Dorothy would have leapt into the air protesting “demonic injustice”—but Noir’s delusions showed no sign of stopping. Entertainment novels might have a reputation for lowering a person’s intelligence compared to proper literature, but they were outstanding at giving a person’s imagination wings. Naturally, Noir’s delusions—no, her imagination—had already soared far beyond the bounds of a normal person’s.
"P-please, Dorothy… My uniform must be shown to the Young Miss first…"
In the mind of a Noir long trained by entertainment novels, even a pitiful image of Blanc in tears, forced to show Dorothy her uniform, took vivid shape.
"Young Miss…?"
The fantasy growing inside Noir finally swelled past what she could handle, and her brain simply stopped working. Blanc’s call got it running again soon enough—but rather than recovering, Noir’s mind simply resumed its error-riddled delusions.
I Became the Shuttle of the Hero Party.
The Hero Who Is Released Upon the World After 15 Years.
Two novel titles flashed through Noir’s mind. She had never read adult novels, much less the wicked and cruel demonic genre known as NTR—but those two titles were infamous enough that even she knew of them. They were the sort of books that malicious types recommended as “beginner novels” right alongside Lightroad whenever they spotted a fresh sprout choosing their first story in a bookstore. Pairing those two with Lightroad might sound like blasphemy to avid readers who consumed every genre without discrimination—but unlike Lightroad, which at worst left one with anger, discomfort, and emptiness, those novels could inflict wounds on a new reader from which they might never recover. Truly a nasty prank.
She had never even read them, yet just recalling the titles made Noir’s hands and feet tremble.
Dorothy… How dare you…! Ah, aaah… Dorothy…!!! One week of snack confiscation…!
"Hiek!"
In the maid break room, Dorothy—who had been eating snacks with Anjel—felt an inexplicable chill race down her spine.
"Oh my, little Rosy. Whatever is the matter?"
"A-Anjel unnie… Something cold just went right through me all of a sudden…"
"A cold, perhaps? The weather has been warm lately, but do take care of yourself."
"Yeah… I will…"
And the next day, Dorothy discovered that the snacks allotted to her in the snack basket had vanished—and sank to the floor on the spot.
Why… Why would anyone pull such a demonic prank…? What kind of devilish person would do this…?
Dorothy stared at her empty snack basket for a long time. Just before the tears came, Blanc quietly handed over her own allotted portion, and Dorothy was finally able to calm down.